Isn’t it nice? They’ve given us a whole month to celebrate women’s history. We’ve worked so hard for so many years and we’ve finally gotten a whole month to remember how hard we’ve worked for women’s equality! /snark
Yeah we have the vote - great. And yeah we’re making gains in boardrooms all over the world. But I wish to feck the message would get out to the moronic judges on the Court of Special Appeals in Maryland that we’re in the 21st century and that women are full-fledged and autonomous human beings.
They’re applying an ancient English common-law stating that if a woman gives an initial consent to sex but then says stop after the guy’s penetrated her, and the guy keeps going – it’s not rape. And if she is ever raped, compensation needs to be made to the injured party - her husband or her father.
Her husband or father are the injured parties if she's raped? WTF?
A recent NOW newsletter included a passage from the Court of Special Appeals’ decision...
"The concept ... rooted in ancient laws and adopted by the English common-law, views the initial 'de-flowering' of a woman as the real harm or insult which must be redressed by compensating, in legal contemplation, the injured party—the father or the husband. This initial violation of the victim also provided the basis for the criminal proceeding against the offender. But, to be sure, it was the act of penetration that was the essence of the crime of rape; after this initial infringement upon the responsible male's interest in a woman's sexual and reproductive functions, any further injury was considered to be less consequential. The damage was done."
People in my state of Maryland are up in arms over this decision. As a result of this case, first-degree rape convictions around the state were reversed. People are working hard to get a higher court to review this wrong-headed and sexist decision, and legislators in the Maryland statehouse are considering laws to address this issue directly, but I’m blown away that my state could be the setting for this kind of sexism and ignorance!
The NOW newsletter went on to discuss the case out of Massachusetts, where a teenager from the Dominican Republic who couldn’t afford a legal abortion, turned to a Dominican tried and true method of causing a miscarriage (she took an anti-ulcer medicine called Cytotec), and is now being charged under an obscure 1840 law for "procuring an illegal miscarriage" because her 20 ounce, non-viable fetus was delivered and survived (because of the heroic efforts of the hospital staff) for 4 days.
This last one got me – seems if you’re a cop in California you can get away with stalking and sexually assaulting a woman if she’s a stripper. From the NOW newsletter...
A woman we only know as Lucy from Orange County, California, is another example of the archaic attitudes that threaten women even today. Lucy was stalked and sexually assaulted by a police officer, and then was further victimized by that police officer's unabashedly sexist lawyer. According to news reports, one night when Lucy left her job at a strip club, a police officer waited for her on a secluded section of highway outside of his jurisdiction, pulled her over and propositioned her, and sexually assaulted her when she refused. No one, not even the defense, disputes that he ejaculated on Lucy — the DNA tests proved it — and the prosecutor (who called him a "predator") presented a mountain of evidence that he had previously stalked and harassed her.
After Lucy reported what happened and the case went to court, the officer's attorneys argued that she "got what she wanted. She's an overtly sexual person." A jury of 11 men and one woman found the officer not guilty.
Evidently, if you are a stripper, you deserve to be violated and victimized by the very people whose job it is to protect you. It's not just one beastly police officer who thinks so — but his defense lawyer and a so-called "jury of her peers."
While it's scary to contemplate, just imagine: if this kind of unmitigated sexism can happen in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland, what is happening to women in less "enlightened" states? Think about it.
I read this early this morning and I still can’t shake the feeling that we’re still stuck in the 19th century as far as women’s rights are concerned.
Rape isn’t rape if he’s already penetrated you in Maryland.
You’re thrown in jail for being poor and uneducated in Massachusetts, and
If you’re a stripper in California, then you’re just asking for it when a sicko cop stalks and assaults you!
Can you imagine what the judges are doing in less progressive states?